A Plethora of Great Games

As I promised in my last post (see below) I wanted to talk about some of the games I've been playing lately. Over the past month I think I've finished more games than I did during most of my teenage years. I've made it a point to finish what I'm playing these days so I am able to get the full experience as intended by the designers. Let's keep it down two games though so as not to make this post too long.

Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions came out for the Xbox 360 back in January of 2007 to decent reviews. Over that year they also released a somewhat buggy version for PC and a version for the PS3. Now I've never been huge into console gaming so the recent trend of releasing great action games multiplatform has been a boon for me. Since the first version was bugged Capcom released Lost Planet: Colonies Edition over the summer and I decided to pick it up while I wait for the great releases coming this Christmas. Lost Planet centers around the adventures of Wayne on the harsh world of E.D.N III. The colonists of this world have been chased off by the predations of the Akrid, a race of gigantic insects. The few individuals that survive the harsh winter wastelands survive by collecting thermal energy, which is found in the body of every Akrid. Though the game is linear, except for the few outdoor missions that tend to give you a wide area in which to operate, the story is really what kept me playing on. That and fast paced mech combat against giant insects. Giant mechs known as Vital Suits are scattered all over the levels. These suits were designed to be flexible and match any playstyle a player might throw at it. Each VS has a number of customizable hardpoints that allow you to swap it's weapons for any you might find later. I almost always had a missile launcher and gatling gun. The variety of suits in the game ranged from slow moving suits that could jump high or hover to the vastly more maneuverable models that allowed for limited flight and jetting around. This game became one of the inspirations for my Unreal 3 Mech combat mod. When not running around in a VS Wayne can carry 2 different weapons (even a weapon pulled off a VS can be used) and has access to a grappling hook. The action when not in a mech is more like a combat platformer. Wayne has to get to a certain point using weapons commonly found in shooters (assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, and sniper rifles) while doing battle with snow pirates (colonists who remained on the planet), the Akrid, and NeVec a shadowy corporations that killed your father. The level designs were fantastic with battles raging inside Akrid hives and ruined cities. Special attention was paid to creating levels that were sprawling vertically. Though your supply of thermal energy was constantly depleting (giving you a timer like games of old) replacement energy was dropped by every enemy and there was never a short supply of those. Weapons were placed in excellent positions with rewards given to players who used their grapple to explore the levels. I could almost always find a rocket launcher on top of some building or vehicle if I looked hard enough. Being that it was a third person action game you might expect to have camera position issues but Lost Planet's levels and hallways were always large enough to accommodate both the player and the camera. The new PC version still had a few bugs (my computer bought this year would lag at times and even locked up twice) but the game was far from unplayable. The only pet peeve I really had with this game is that it was a direct port from the Xbox 360 version, complete with the instructions telling me that a gamepad was the preferred input method and all of the instruction screens when I jumped into a VS explaining how to operate it using a 360 controller with no mention of keyboard controls. The additional multiplayer content you get when purchasing the Colonies Edition never really came into play with me since even though I can play cross platform I had a very hard time finding anybody playing. If your a mech junky like myself this game should definitely be added to your list. And since it's has a very modest price point I would suggest it as great filler if your waiting for Fallout 3 and Red Alert 3 like I am.

Maybe I'll keep down to one review. Till next time folks!

Wow How Time Flies

Welcome folks! Here I am reporting to you live from....... The Ferris State University Computer Lab in downtown Grand Rapids. I know I have not posted in awhile (read: several months) but I swear I have a good reason. Following the successful completion of the Digital Animation Summer Camp and my writing of a manual on how to run future camps, I have been quite busy with my work as a web designer. Add the fact that school started again in September and I barely have enough time between the two to keep up on the latest games. Since I want to be a designer I feel that making sure I keep up with games (good and bad) is very important. When designing a feature for a map or mod its good to know if anybody has tried it before, and if so what I can do to improve it. Anyway on to recent project reports.....

This blog has become a project in itself for me. Currently my business is working on creating a blog using WordPress (wordpress.org) for a client and I thought to myself Why haven't I done this for me yet? So when I complete that project and have time to create one for myself I will post a link to my new blog.

My WAR-Piracy project has evolved again (big surprise)! The level has evolved a bit to have the ships parked in a bombed out port to offer some land based combat but there is an ulterior motive to adding this portion. This map will be the flagship map for a new mod featuring fast moving mech based combat. The plan is to ship the map and 3 mechs (basically variations of the same design) as well as a mutator that allows you to use the mechs on your favorite UT3 maps. The design is complete and I hope to do some playtesting using another model I'm working on soon. The mod will focus on short range and melee combat using the mech suits. Combat will be possible outside the suits with plans for an emp type weapon added later.

With my impending graduation coming up within a couple semesters and my wedding to my wonderful fiance and business partner May 29th I am unsure currently if I will make it to GDC this year. It would be disappointing since I've gone the last 2 years but the wedding bills come first.

Within the next few days I hope to be posting my design reviews of the titles I have been recently playing: the newest version of Lost Planet, Spore, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and an oldie but goodie, F.E.A.R.

Summer and Vehicles

Ahh summer. Soaring temperatures, free time, and (my personal favorite) Summer Camps. I've had the privilege of administrating and teaching at the Ferris State University - Grand Rapids Digital Animation and Game Design summer camps for 3 years now. As one of the adjunct professors said to me the other day it would seem I have been bitten by the "Teaching Bug." I'm not going to lie, I really enjoy passing on my knowledge to high school students who have a genuine interest in making games for others. There was certainly never such a program when I was their age and thus it took quite a bit of time for me to get where I am today (I'm almost 28). It also helps confirm to me that I know how to do this stuff. I primarily teach Storyboarding and Story Development, basic poly modeling with 3d Studio Max and slightly more advanced Unreal concepts such as lighting, particle emitters, and importing your own textures and static meshes into the engine. It's great to see what the students come up with by the end of the week and you can always tell the students that are going to go far. They are the ones that took their projects home every night and continued to work on them and I do everything I can to help them be successful.

Now a lot of my free time as of late has been swallowed up by the Unreal 3 Editor but strangely enough not on level creation. I have fancied myself more of a vehicle designer lately and have designed a few things meant to compliment the gameplay in my WAR-Piracy map. All these vehicles are currently in the concept art stage and I am studying the process of how to get them into the game once they are finished. The first is a simple boat to get players from one warship to the other if they did not want to use jump pads or flying vehicles, just a simple troop transport with one weapon. The second is a flying troop transport that would allow the players being transported the ability to shoot out of it, kind of like a futuristic VTOL aircraft. Lastly, my pride and joy, the Axon Chimera. This is a wheeled mech vehicle equipped with a powerful chaingun and a shield. It is designed to make a single soldier powerful enough to take on light vehicles and massed infantry and serve as a maneuverable counterbalance to the Necris Darkwalker. That and I'm a sucker for mech combat. I hope to design a couple maps that pit a number of Chimeras versus a Necris equivalent which I am designing as well.

Lastly I would like to talk about the Diablo 3 Petition to change the art direction of the game. The folks who have signed this petition feel that the new art style for Diablo 3 does not conform to the previous games that are basically filled with the color black. Now considering the last game was in 2000 and the pace of technology computers can handle much more color these days. The concept of drawing nothing outside the players light radius may have been a technological constraint of the day disguised as a gameplay mechanic. Current graphic technology can now handle vast amounts of enemies and expansive environments being drawn on the screen at the same time. Also the new art direction may represent lessons learned by the Blizzard Art team. The final point to make is that games are a form of art that is being created for the public to enjoy and that some people will not like it. The number of people who have signed this petition are but a small part of the fan base Blizzard has for its games all over the world. The game will not suffer from a few dissenters on the internet. I say to Blizzard keep providing us with your art and I will keep enjoying it for many years to come.

Longevity

Funny I should name this post Longevity since I hadn't posted in awhile but I've been very busy. Going forward I plan to add a new post every Friday and will begin documenting my experiences created new content in the Unreal 3 Engine and my continuing search for employment in this wonderful industry.

On to the point of todays post. Lately I have given up World of Warcraft (read: crack) temporarily to go back through my old library of games and finish some of them. After my fiance got back into Stronghold 2 I decided to pick it up again as well and was suprised to find that every evening there are several games of it being played all over the world. Now this game was published back in 2005 by Take Two and has enjoyed continuing success ( I saw at least two boxes on the shelf at my local Best Buy) due to, in my mind, 3 factors. The first is continued support from the developer Firefly. They have kept patching the game since day one and have reached version 1.4.1. They had also patched in more modern graphic effects such as bloom lighting since release. The second is a strong community for the game. In my search for more maps I found at least 2 great fan sites but the best was Stronghold 2 Heaven. This site has an active forum community of fans and mappers as well directions for the mapping tools that shipped with the game. The last thing that has extended the life of this great game is the fact that it did indeed ship with robust mapping tools. The documentation that comes with the editor is a bit lacking but the internet is full of great tutorials. I've been spending many hours working with the editor to create new multiplayer maps for myself and my fiance to play on but the tools don't stop there. The editor also allows the creation of free play sandbox maps, Economic scenario missions, and War-based scenario missions.

Being able to create new content for my games has always been an important part of my entertainment experience over the years. Great games like Stronghold 2 and Starcraft have continued to thrive because of great support from the developers and an active community of fans that continue to create content. These are factors that I feel are important in future titles and hope to continue to see going forward.

Internet Superstar

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile but I'm still trying to finish up this semester. None of my internship opportunities panned out but Ferris State University - Grand Rapids is putting on an industry day so I'm hoping something might come of that.

I found out yesterday that one of my friends posted a video on YouTube that we made in our digital video class that a producer in New York has taken some interest in for a tv show. You can see that video here.

Accessibility in the FPS Genre

As an avid FPS gamer (among other things) I find that the genre tends to cater to the more hardcore player rather than the casual gamer. My fiance loves rpg's and rts's but will only play an fps if me and my friends are, such as at a social game night. Last weekend we were playing Call of Duty 4. CoD 4 incorporates an experience system that rewards players with perks and additional weapon options as they score kills. However this system makes it hard for somebody who doesn't play the genre that much to compete. My fiance said that it rewards better players so much that after a certain point less skilled players become absolutely unable to compete, thus ruining the experience for them. Call of Duty attempts to combat this (pun intended) by creating a separate "Old School" mode that takes out the experience system and replaces the perks and weapons with battlefield pickups. However to me that detracts from the experience by dumbing it down. As a designer I tried to think of ways that might make the game more equal for casual players like her. Call of Duty could have changed at which level the perks were given to a player. For instance after a 3 kill streak a player is given a UAV, or temporary radar. Expereinced players can get access to a UAV very quickly while a less experienced player may never get one. Several experience levels into the system players have access to a perk that will jam an enemy UAV thus making it much harder for an inexperienced player even if they get a UAV to find an experienced player. This negates the advantage that even the inexperienced player might gain. To a casual player this creates an insurmountable barrier once the enemy reaches a certain level. But by moving around the order in which perks such as the UAV Jammer and Extra Armor are given you can still maintain the gameplay balance but make it easy for inexperienced players to occasionally defeat more experienced players. For example, by moving the UAV Jammer to become available at an earlier level an inexperience player can gain a certain amount of protection from a more experience player thus making it still possible for them to have fun without getting too frustrated and wanting to quit.

I am hoping to take this idea of accessibility for causal players one step further through the Make Something Unreal contest Epic Games just announced today. The plan is to create a mutator that will give a slight advantage to players as they fall further behind the leader. I hope to enter it in the Best Mutator catagory. I also hope to complete WAR-Piracy in time to enter it in the Best Warfare map category.

On the Internship front. I am still waiting on an answer from a developer on a possible design internship. I'm very excited so wish me luck. I will update as soon as I know anything.

GDC Bears Fruit

Here it is, proof that going to GDC to catch that elusive internship really does payoff. Merely 2 weeks after getting back from San Francisco I get an email regarding one of my resumes I had dropped off with an offer for a summer design internship at a game developer. Number one, design internships are very hard to come by and number two it was at a place I had simply dropped a resume, I had not spoke to anybody there. The offer came from a developer that had neither met me in person or really gotten to know me ahead of time, though both things are still important in my mind. I am currently filling out a design test that seems very in depth and will of course post here about any other opportunities that surface. But good things do happen people and I am living proof.

GDC 08 Slideshow

GDC 08: Day 2

Day 2 saw me on the expo floor here at GDC. My first stop of course had to be the Nintendo booth. I was able to see the new Wii Fit peripheral in action and I have to say I was impressed. The pressure sensitive device looked like an exercise step with 2 pads on the top that read the changes in weight. It has obvious exercise applications but also could be used to expand the already great casual game library that the Wii already has. My brain goes to how it can be used to create great mini games for another Mario Party title. Next we saw the new version of 3ds Max 2008 coming out from Autodesk. We only saw a brief bit of the demo but one thing really made me excited. Now I like to work primarily in the perspective view when modeling and that can lead to problems when the software reads the pivot point for the window a fair ways away from the work. In this new version of 3ds Max you can actually adjust the working pivot so when you rotate and zoom the window it pivots around the position you set. That's amazing for my work. It's truly been a great trip and hopefully helpful for starting my career. Once I'm back home after a long day of traveling tomorrow I will be sure to post my pictures from the event. I would also like to add another developer to my list from yesterday. The great folks from Petroglyph studios were there and I enjoyed talking to them, that and they also said I smile like the president of the company. That has to be a good sign! Again a big thank you goes out to all the developers that took the time to chat with me and I hope to be able to come back next year.

GDC 08: Day 1

In my mind a very successful first day here in sunny San Francisco. The Career Pavilion at the Game Developers Conference has a great reputation as one of the best in the game industry. I found it to be full of great opportunities for those of us looking to get into the industry, if you are persistent. Most companies there are looking to hire people with experience and most positions available require at least 1 shipped title. However, the mythical internship opportunity does indeed exist. Now I am in a rare position that my degree can easily be finished no matter where I end up since I need mostly just general education classes to finish. This would allow me to accept a permanent position and still finish my degree so I do have a bit of flexibility. Now most of the bigger publishers who were there had staffed booths that were there basically to tell you to go checkout their website, but the folks at Activision were able to tell me to check in about a week when they will post their internship opportunities. 2k Games also gets a thank you for having a wonderful staff who took my interest to heart and really made me feel good about talking to them. However the best publisher booth I saw was THQ. These guys had at least one representative from each of their developers in attendance and were all more than willing to talk to a guy trying to break into games. Last but certainly not least were the folks from independent developer Day 1 Studios. Their staff were very interested in me and my search and for that I thank them.

Demo Reel

Sorry for the slight delay

Ahh delays, they happen to the best of us. Mine were some of the traditional reasons, I got sick, my computer was in for service for almost 3 weeks (hard to get anything done that way), and I just happen to have gotten engaged to a beautiful young woman who has a love of games as big as mine and happens also to be a talented texture artist! I consider myself very lucky indeed. I've also been finalizing my work samples for the GDC Career Pavilion. Anyway on to the point of this post.

Is it just me or does everybody have that one dream game they want to make? I had an idea for a revolutionary game that blends rts, fps, and rpg gameplay to create an experience that has never been done before, though many seem to have tried. My idea has a strong story rooted in an established ip and more importantly is connected to an ip I believe in, the Warhammer 40,000 license currently held by developer THQ. The game follows the player through a series of battles connected by a strong story of moral choices and revenge. By making "good" choices, and I put good in parenthesis because anybody who knows much about Warhammer 40k knows that good is a relative term, the player progresses through becoming a member of the planetary defense force and defending their homeworld against alien raiders then later becoming an elite space marine and striking a blow against the evil forces of Chaos and also the brother who joined them. Being evil allows you to play the brother as he progresses through joining a militant Chaos cult and later becoming a Chaos space marine and a champion of the dark gods. The game plays from a first person perspective with both ranged and melee combat, but the real fun is the skill based system and unique tactical orders interface.

I'm not going to give anymore away as this is the internet and all. It is a shame that publishers and developers don't accept unsolicited game ideas but at the same time I understand that policy. The hope is after some time in the industry I can eventually submit the idea and hopefully get it made as it has so much potential.

P.S if you are interested in this idea and work at a THQ owned development house please contact me.

The Importance of Being Board

Board games have always had a special place for me. The family sitting around the table rolling dice and yelling at each other brings back such fond memories. But terrible family nostalgia aside board games are great template for designing gameplay in the interactive world. I recently purchased the new version of Settlers of Catan, a very popular game of trading resources and building towns set on an island. The island setting gives a great way to limit the 5 different resources available and when you play with 4 players (using the standard edition this is the maximum, there is an expansion available for adding up to 6 players) forces you to think about how to strategically place your settlements to maximize your ability to expand while simultaneously blocking the other players. Now this may sound very complicated and people who know me know I love deep strategy games but all this comes in an incredibly easy to understand set of rules. I was able to pick it up in 5 minutes and was even able to teach my girlfriend's mother how to play very easily. Back to the point of the post though, Catan was recently translated into a digital version on Xbox Live by Big Huge Games, a developer of fine RTS products. So as a developer I've decided to use board games as a test bed for new types of gameplay. At the very least I may come up with a great board game and at most be able to fine tune the design before I implement it in a video game. Either way simply the act of playing board games can be used as inspiration in the creation of new ideas and projects. I'm currently working on an idea in Unreal 3 inspired somewhat indirectly by the venerable classic Battleship. I've also been working on a fun board game where teams of engineers build robots in a junkyard. Board games can teach us how to create engaging yet simple gameplay that can be picked up by anybody and isn't that the point?

The Begining......

Welcome to the first post of what hopes to be a narrative of my experiences in finding employment in the Game Industry and my thoughts on current trends in games. Check back in the next few days as I post examples of my work and details regarding my trip to GDC 2008.